


A Lion's Snow

by TheQuenchiestHotLeafJuice



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Eventual Smut, F/M, Mild Language, Original Character(s), Racism, Slow Burn, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 09:35:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14590143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQuenchiestHotLeafJuice/pseuds/TheQuenchiestHotLeafJuice
Summary: Kayuki is the only daughter of a wealthy northern water tribe family and an amateur bender with some healing training. She is on the run from her family to avoid her betrothal when her ship is captured by the fire nation and taken to Ember Island. Raion is a fire bending master who used to tutor Zuko and has just assumed his father's role as the headmaster of the Ember Island Fire Dojo which is considered one of the most prestigious bending academies in the Fire Nation. Raion is smitten by the new tea girl with a dark complexion at the cafe by the beach and is dying to learn more about her, but she is very secretive.





	A Lion's Snow

KAYUKI  
The sting of the salt in the air paired with the rain made the biting winds of the northern sea cut right through Kayuki’s outer furs making her skin crawl with goosebumps. She had never known cold like this despite having only ever known the confines of the great city of the Northern Water Tribe. The sea was particularly rough this day, though it had been much the same for most of the week that had passed since she had taken up employ upon the merchant fishing vessel from the Earth Kingdom. The rain was coming down at a heavy pace now and the clouds only grew darker on the horizon ahead. At this point her furs were beginning to soak through making and she could feel clusters of her dark brown hair beginning to stick to her skin.  
“Great!” she thought to herself in sarcastic tone, “after all of the things I’ve been through for this, let’s just add a cold to the list too.”  
Suddenly an errant wave caught the ship causing it to list violently to the side. Kayuki lost her footing and in a desperate attempt to save herself from the fall Kayuki slammed her left foot down to try to regain balance only to find it now lodged in some rigging and her momentum not on her side. The force of her fall caused her foot twist at a violent angle and Kayuki screamed out in pain as she writhed on the deck.  
“For the love of Tui!” She cried out as reached for her ankle and instinctively curled into a fetal position on the deck. “La be damned if this day could get any worse” She cursed semi audibly, and the tears began to stream down her face and mix with the salty rain.  
“Get up, girl” she heard a surly voice growl from above her and she rolled to see the ships captain standing nearly on top of her. He was a burly Earth Kingdom man who was nearly twice as tall as most men back home and nearly twice as wide also. He had pinkish brown skin, tanned and burned from days spent with the harsh sun reflecting off the sea and thick brown beard that looked as though it hadn’t been washed in months or possibly years. He reached out with one of his dry cracked hands and before Kayuki knew it, she was upright once more. The rapid pace of her ascension caused the world to spin around her and she tried to put her left foot down to keep her balance but that was a mistake. She cried out in pain and nearly crashed to the deck again, but the Earth Kingdom man was there to catch her fall. Quickly he had summoned two more of his crew and before she knew it she had been whisked below deck and deposited on the cot that had been allocated to her in the galley’s store room. The men were gone almost as swiftly as they were upon her and Kayuki curled up once more and wept. Before she knew it, sleep was upon her as the exhaustion of another terrible day at sea had overwhelmed her.  
“Kayuki” a voice whispered softly in her ear, “Kayuki, you silly penguin, you have to get up. Today’s the day.” Her mother’s voice was deceptively sweet.  
Kayuki rolled over in her bed to find her mother’s big chocolate eyes smiling back down at her, the same as Kayuki’s, or so the reflecting pool said. The smell of seal bacon and penguin eggs engulfed the igloo that her and her mother had been sharing for the past few days and a content grin was plastered upon her mother’s face.  
“Punuq is such a lucky man, to get to have that pretty face to wake up to every morning,” her mother chided as she turned back to tend to their breakfast.  
“What do you mean by that?” Kayuki muttered sleepily as she began to pull herself out of the thick bedding.  
“Don’t be silly Kayuki, I’m Just saying that you’ve inherited some very good looks from your mother, and your husband is going to be very lucky to get to start his days looking at that.”  
“What do you mean, ‘husband’, mother?”  
“Honestly, Kayuki it was funny at first, but you’ve been betrothed to Punuq for almost two years now and today is the big day!”  
“NO!” Kayuki cried out in protest and dashed for the entrance of the igloo.  
“CRACK!” Suddenly Kayuki was jarred from her slumber as the whole ship shuddered around her and she was nearly thrown from her cot.  
“Man overboard!” and “Fire Nation! Fire Nation!” She heard the captain’s voice cry from above deck. Suddenly there was a thud from directly overhead swiftly followed by the staccato rhythm of steps overhead as if men wear running in formation.  
“Oh no, this is it.” She thought to herself, panicked. “I just couldn’t accept Punuq. I just had to run and now I’m going to die.”  
“No one escapes,” she heard a mean voice growl sharply from above deck. “These men are known to be making trade with enemies and are to be taken to the mines. Try not to maim them too badly.” Kayuki could her the screams of the crew. She had never seen fire bending before, but she could only assume what those terrible whooshing noises were above deck.  
After what felt like an eternity a sudden silence overwhelmed the air, and she heard the same mean voice from before, “Search the hold for anything valuable and any stragglers and then tie off the ship for towing. It’s prime fishing season on Ember Island and this vessel would make a perfect addition to the fleet.”  
Kayuki threw herself out from underneath the covers and began looking around the galley as the stairs began to creak. Her eyes fell on several sacks of potatoes in the corner and nearly left her own kin behind as she dove behind them. The creaking grew louder and through the threshold appeared two pale men who almost seemed to be made of metal with how much armor they were wearing, both with a flame in hand. Kayuki was filled with fear at what they might do to her if they found her behind the potatoes but also with a strange sense of awe at the way the flames danced in their hands, flickering between various hues of orange, yellow, and red as wild as a bon fire and yet sitting in a neat little ball in the palms of their hands. She had only ever known fire as tenacious and consuming everything it touched and yet just as the stories told, these me were holding it as if it were nothing.  
One soldier made his way into the crew’s quarters where the men slept as the other went towards the captain’s hold. She heard a loud crash from the crew’s quarters followed by many more from both sides that ripped her back into the reality of the situation. Kayuki began to rock herself back and forth as the stress of the situation began to mount.  
“Anything?!” she heard the man in the crew’s quarters yell out.  
“Not shit except some oils, and a few dyed furs,” the other man replied, “I don’t know why we bother, the damn water tribe savages never trade anything worthwhile.”  
“I’m going back up, check the galley to see if they at least have anything worth eating, and report back,” the first soldier commanded. “Admiral Zhao ordered the captain to be back in port on Ember Island in a fortnight, so try not to waste too much time. The sooner we start making headway, the less liable the captain is to give us shit for the rest of the day, though he probably will anyway. Man’s never happy”  
The first soldier made his made his way back topside and the second soldier did as ordered and headed towards the galley. As his footsteps grew closer Kayuki could begin to feel the thud of his heavy metal boots shaking the wooden floors harder and harder with each step forward. He breath began to pick and as he entered the galley, Kayuki backed herself into the corner as far as she could causing the wooded walls to dig into her back. The soldier began to look around the stores and started throwing things around the place. First a pan and a few pots, then a few strands of hanging cured meat. He threw the cabinets open and let out an audible groan when noting seemed to catch his eye. Then he looked towards Kayuki’s corner, and that’s when his eyes found her cot.  
“What do we have here?” He mumbled to himself and he made his way ever closer. At this moment Kayuki was absolutely petrified, desperate not to make a single move or noise that would betray her hiding spot. The guard was quickly upon the cot and threw back the covers only to curse quietly to himself. Next, he flipped the mattress over so that it was now resting against the potatoes and kicked it open with his pointed boot. The force of everything right up against where she was hiding almost made Kayuki cry out in fear, but she was able to contain herself. The soldier cursed loudly as the cot yielded nothing but a shower of feathers and dust and soon thereafter gave up and returned to the deck empty handed.  
After the second soldier had made his way back up the stairs, there was a flurry of footsteps followed by a gradual silence that Kayuki hoped meant that the soldiers had disembarked back to whatever vessel they had came from. Kayuki’s mind was awash with thoughts as she tried to process everything that just happened. “What just happened on deck, are they going to come back, what happens if they do come back, were they really maiming people up there or was he just trying to scare us, savages really?”  
Suddenly there was a heavy lurch and she could feel the ship beginning to move through the water again and one final thought crossed her mind, “where in the name of the spirits is Ember Island?”


End file.
